Cinematical

French director Olivier Assayas has an impressive filmmaking pedigree: his father was writer/director Jacques Rémy and, like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard before him, he wrote for Cahiers du cinéma before taking up direction. Irma Vep, his international breakthrough, got a certain degree of exposure in the US, but despite its complexity and relative success, he's be largely overlooked here since then. While it's unlike that anything will change with the release of his next project (which he wrote and will be directing) it nevertheless sounds intriguing.

Entitled Boarding Gate, the movie boasts a multicultural universe of stars, including Michelle Yeoh, Asia Argento, Michael Madsen, and not one but two Tony Leungs. According to early web reports, the film's convoluted plot revolves around "An Italian woman [Argento] who lives in London [and] has a passionate affair with a former financial big gun [Madsen]. She also had a second lover [a Leung], a contract killer who has to kill the big gun. Her second lover's wife [Yeoh] is behind the scenes, pulling the strings."  With Assayas at the helm, the chances that the movie will be the straightforward genre story that summary suggests is pretty much nil, so it'll be exciting to see what approach he takes. No information is yet available about when he might begin shooting, however, and it's likely to be a while before we get to take a look.